The
Fairford Coach case appeared at the House of Lords
on 23-26 October 2006 and Judgement was delivered on Wednesday 13 December
2006. The judgement arrived just short of the 4 year anniversary of the events
that led to the case (and 2 years after the last court hearings in the Court
of Appeal). We won the case, and this result cannot be legally challenged by
the police. There is excellent coverage of the case on the Indymedia
UK feature about our win.

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Background:How 120+ People were "Coach-napped" on their way from London
to Fairford.

On 22 March
2003, the police used surprisingly extreme tactics to prevent more than
120 activists from reaching a legally sanctioned anti-war demonstration
in Fairford, (Gloucestershire, UK). The demonstration outside a US
Airforce Base in Fairford was well attended with estimates of up to 5,000
activists attending. Among the scheduled speakers on the day were writer
George Monbiot, Green MEP Caroline
Lucas, and writer/comic Mark Thomas.
The people who police prevented from attending were a diverse group with
a broad range of affiliations. The main thing that they had in common was
the desire to travel from London by coach and the intention of joining the
legal protest in Fairford. Two of the four main scheduled speakers for the
Fairford demonstration were travelling on these coaches from London.

After the coaches
had travelled two and a half hours from London, the coaches were stopped
by police just miles from the demonstration. Using section
60 powers (of the Public Order and Criminal Justice Act 1994) police
slowly searched the coaches for weapons for one and a half hours.

The passengers
cooperated with this search, and they were invited to reboard the coaches
when the search concluded. NO ARRESTS WERE MADE FOR ANY BEHAVIOR OR ITEMS
FOUND. Passengers now believed they were going to proceed to the demonstration
at Fairford. After all the passengers boarded, the coaches were forced all
the way back to London under a continuous 9 to 12 vehicle police escort.

During the
two and a half hour journey to London, no passengers were ever granted access
to services/toilets even though repeated requests were made for this permission.
Many passengers were frightened to see the police so freely overstepping
their legal powers. One passenger described the surreal experience as "just
like the movie Speed except that it was the police who were stopping us
from slowing down". The coach drivers were threatened with arrest
if they didn't comply with the police escort, and the stress they endured
during the journey was quite considerable. Currently more than 70 of the
coach passengers are involved in an ongoing high court human rights judicial
review case against the police.

All of these
passengers were held against their will on the coaches for two and a half
hours and prevented from exercising their right to protest at a legally
agreed demonstration which attracted between 2,000-5,000 demonstrators from
across the UK. There was no need to send the three full coaches back to
London. The courts heard the judicial review case in January 2004, and the
judgment in February 2004 claimed that the police acted unlawfully by detaining
the passengers on the coaches. Unfortunately, the courts claimed that the
police were right to turn the group of cooperative, unarmed coach passengers
away from the legally organised demonstration. The coach passengers have
decided to appeal this aspect of the High Court judgement.

Note:
The coach passengers were generally travelling as individuals, not
as groups. The individuals included a range of different backgrounds and
affiliation. Coach passengers included members of the following groups (and
many more)-

Some of the coach passengers were members of the following groups (but
nearly all people were travelling in an individual capacity):

IF YOU WISH
TO PARTICIPATE IN A GROUP LEGAL ACTION: Visit our Help
page for advice.

ENQUIRIES:
For enquiries that are not press related, people can contact us at the
following address (but remove the words NOSPAM before sending so that it just
reads info@fairford...)infoNOSPAM@fairfordcoachaction.org.uk

If you don't have
e-mail, we can be contacted at Fairford Coach Action, c/o HSG, PO Box 2474,
London, N8